The Rabid (Book 1) (20 page)

Vivian pe
els away Ms. Cassie’s dress, exposing her naked chest and torso. One by one, they lash at her body, passing the razor from bloody hand to bloody hand. They cut her down like a tree. She withers slowly. The blood pours from countless incisions. Melding together and forming a liquid cloak. Vivian stands back, raising her hands towards the ceiling. The murmur of prayer fills the air, serving as the soundtrack of their butchery. Ms. Cassie disappears beneath the push of the mob, falling to her side, unconscious. They huddle over her. Bending and bowing, stabbing and slicing.

Lee kneels in the aisle, shaking with grief. Bethany looks to me, motioning to the pistol at her waist.

I shake my head.

This is not the moment. Not yet. We move we die. They expect it.

We wait.

Ten minutes pass.

Vivian rises once more behind the pulpit, pleased with herself. “It does my faith good to see so many willing to separate sword from sheath. Now, let’s get these mongrels to the poles.”

“To the poles!”
They echo with a familiar unity.

How many have suffered at their hands? How much blood runs through the foundation of this building?

It burns deep inside of me. I want to kill them all. Slow. Deliberate. I want to feel their blood stop in their veins beneath the weight of my grasp.

Ms.
Cassie appears among the mob, her face and body slashed to ribbons. She is barely breathing. She clutches desperately to life. Dorian and another guard boost her dead weight and begin dragging her out the side door. Donny follows with the daughter in tow, yanking her by her hair, grinning that black toothed grin.

I'll wipe it from his face.

“Bring our guests,” Vivian calls after the crowd has filed out. “Any semblance of aggression, kill them, the mother and daughter first.”

The guards by the entrance usher us up the aisle with their muzzles
, as Vivian rushes out before us to join the spectacle.

Bethany is next to me. We are out front. Lee and Momma are walking directly at our backs, obscuring the view of our custodians. I squeeze in close and tap her with my foot, she moves quickly, dropping the deceptively heavy pocket piece in the
center of my palm. I place it beneath my shirt and keep pace for the exit.

Outside
, the flock has gathered around the perimeter of the baseball diamonds twelve foot high chain link fence. The three guards are just exiting the field and locking the dugout gate. Ms. Cassie and her daughter stand tied to a set of poles positioned just behind the pitcher’s mound. A rectangle opening has been cut in the outfield portion of the gate, a portal for the Rabid. I glance around and notice there is prison yard style fencing running the perimeter of the church grounds, complete with razor wire and floodlights; this place is a fortress.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Vivian stands to my right, her hip cocked, her arms crossed. She watches as
Ms. Cassie’s daughter pulls against the solid steel pole, banging her head, her mouth gagged, and her eyes bleeding desperation. There is no budge. There is no answer. The slaughter house doors are sealed shut.

“If by impressive you mean a disgrace to the whole of the human race
, then yes.”

She laughs that deceptively girlish laugh. “Even now, after what you’ve seen, you’re defiant. You and your people will kneel before this night is through, that I can assure you of.”

“You may kill me, but I can promise you there will be no kneeling.”

“We’ll see,” She glances sideways at me and winks. “Ladies and gentleman, what you are about to witness is not only a sacrifice to our Lord, but it is a stone in the foundation of our future kingdom here on earth. Hit the lights.”

There is a small crash, like thunder, and a dull hum as Dorian yanks the lever on an electric box attached to one of the four light poles surrounding the perimeter of the field. The floodlights fade in slowly. The intensity of the illumination growing with each passing minute, like silver flowers blooming across the face of a midnight prairie. A familiar roar bounds across the shadow of forest carpeting the territory beyond the outfield fence. 

“No way…no way;
this is crazy.” Lee’s hands are in his hair, his head turning between the women and the quaking woods.

They know where they are fed
. I should be shocked. I should be surprised at the madness of this entire arrangement. I should feel some sort of trepidation about what is about to occur. I should be gnashing and waving my fists, succumbing to the rage that accompanies helplessness.

Now isn’t the time.
Later.  Later, there will be time to chew it over.

Right
now, I must look for the moment. My moment. Our moment.

Subjection through horror; that’s the game Vivian is playing. That’s the product she is pushing. Take us out and show us what she can do. Bend our knees by breaking our will. That’s what happened to these bastards. No one wants to be next in line at the pole. It’s easier to worship than rebel. It’s easier to agree than to question. The sheep have their meals spoon fed to them. The wolves have to go out on the prowl. They have to fight. There is one thing I’m certain of, even as that guttural roar sucks the oxygen from my lungs, I’m no sheep.

The first of the Rabid clear the opening. They trample and shove without regard, like a transient mosh pit. When they are beyond the narrow gate, they break into a full sprint, their clothes nothing more than dirty disintegrating stitches, their skin ashen and sagging from their bones, all shapes and sizes, they move like Olympic runners, like cruise missiles, every sense they possess locked on target.

“Honey, don’t look,” Momma tries to blindfold Bethany with a shaky hand, wiping tears from her own face with the other.

“I’m fine, Momma, I’m fine.” Bethany pulls away, watching, unblinking, unwavering,  strong, and fitted to the times.

Ms.
Cassie and her daughter explode like water balloons bounced against a brick wall. The impact is unrelenting. Arms go in one direction and legs in another, their torsos are ripped asunder, the sound of crunching bone and the tearing of raw flesh notates the air, a symphony of annihilation.

Minutes pass.

Nothing is left.

The Rabid lick the blood stained dirt like nutrition starved refugees.

Lee’s head is down, locked between his elbows. I grab the back of one arm, shaking him until he looks at me. “Pull it together, I need you.” I speak softly. Softly enough that Vivian does not hear.

“Shut it down. Toss one of the old carcasses outside the gate. Lure them out and close it off.” Vivian instructs Dorian.

“Yes ma’am.”

She turns on me, hands clasped together just beneath her chin, biting her bottom lip with facetious timidity. “So, did you like it, were you impressed?” She bats her lashes, closing the gap between us, one foot in front of the other.

She’s close enough.

“No, but you’re about to be
.” I pull and raise the pistol and bring the butt end down on the bridge of her nose with every last ounce of force I can muster. The blood and the shock are instant; she falls back, trying to stop up the sudden leak with both hands.

I turn on the two guards standing at our back. Their reaction time is mercifully slow. Their faces tell the story. They never expected it. Never saw it coming.

Where the hell did he get a gun?

I take more time than I should
, leveling off my shots. One for each of them. No exit wound. No dramatic explosion of skull and brain, just a small hole from a small caliber round.

There is a torrent of gunfire. The windows behind us shatter. I put my face in the mud, trying to figure out which direction it’s coming from. Momma throws herself atop Bethany. Lee dances in place, caught in the panic. The crowd around us is screaming, ducking, and running for cover. I roll onto my back, searching for targets, the pistol clutched between the heels of my palms. It’s Dorian, called away from his assigned duty by the ensuing battle. He’s loading another magazine into the undercarriage of his black rifle as I roll up onto my feet.

“Kill them, the mother and the daughter, kill them now.” Vivian yells, pushing herself to her knees, one hand applying pressure to her busted snout, the other painting a target over my family.

Dorian takes a knee as I fire. I miss him by more than a few inches. The stock is snug against his left cheek as one eye draws a line straight down the sights, ensuring maximum damage in exchange for the next pull of the trigger. I can’t hit him. Not from here. Not with a pocket pistol. Not with a .380 round. Momma and Bethany are out of my reach as well.
Too far away for me to shield them from the blast, huddled in a ball, linked arm and arm. They are about to die. Everything that I’ve been fighting for. Every single piece of myself that I have lost and given away…for this. I’m already grieving them as he pulls the trigger. I whimper, holding out a hand as if I can somehow catch the bullets before they arrive, terrible and everlasting.

And then there is Lee.

He is standing over Momma and Bethany, arms outstretched. All three rounds plummet into his torso, just below his rib cage. Blood dribbles from both corners of his mouth, flooding into his throat from the aorta that has just been ripped to shreds by bullets that weren’t meant for him. For a moment, he is frozen, slack jawed, slightly hunched, as if someone simply took the wind out of him. His fall is slow and deliberate; he goes to his butt and then to his back. No words, just his choking and gasping. It’s not heroic. It’s not beautiful. It’s a dreadful ugly thing to behold. His chest inflates once, like a parachute catching a rogue breeze, and then it settles. 

Dorian is up on his feet now. I can’t hit that
sonofabitch, but I fire anyway. He jerks to the left, startled by the return volley. I’m next, no doubt, I’m next. If it’s got to be, then it’s got to be. I’ll die fighting. I prepare myself for it, firing two more unsuccessful bullets in his direction. He’s got me. He’s collected his wits. He’s steady on his feet. His finger is coiling over the trigger.

He vanishes in a dust cloud of automatic gunfire, fifteen rounds tear into and around him. My right ear is ringing as if someone just used it to launch a bottle rocket.

Bethany stands next to me, panting heavy, clutching a rifle from one of the fallen guards, an eddy of white smoke still dancing on the muzzle. She is dazed, staring down at her hands in disbelief, and then up at the twisted shrapnel ridden body of Dorian sprawled in front of her.

“You did
good,” I shake her by the shoulder. “Hey, you did good, now keep moving. Check the bodies for magazines, we need ammo.”

“Okay, okay
.”

I grab Vivian and pull her up, cradling her windpipe in the crook of my elbow. I jam the pistol into her temple. Her glasses hang comically from the side of her face.

Momma holds Lee’s lifeless body in her arms. His head wobbles in her grasp as she runs her fingers through his hair, showering his face with kisses, begging him to come back to her. “Not in this place, baby, please, not here, don’t leave me here. I need you, I need you, come back to me.” His blood blends together with her tears, staining her face like war paint. “Oh God, please, no, please.”

“The race traitor has paid for his sins.” Vivian spouts beneath the swell of my clutches.

This time I bounce the butt of the pistol off her cheek, shattering her spectacles, and embedding the glass in her face. “Every time you say something that I don’t like, I’m going to hurt you. Is that clear?”

“You’re going to die—”

I pop her again, harder this time. Her cheekbone caves. “Is that clear?”

Her knees give out against the pain. I squeeze tighter, holding her in place. She coughs the hair and blood from her lips
, but doesn’t utter another word.

Message received.

“Momma, grab a gun. He’s gone. There’s nothing we can do. But Bethany and I, we need you, please, Momma?”

She looks up at me and shakes her head, her eyes pouring like rain clouds. The optimism that has gotten us all through so much is no longer there. It’s all agony and sorrow now.  She shivers and once more conceals his face in the curtain of her hair. She wraps both arms tight around his chest and back, pulling him up to her and rocking him as she lays her face in the hollow of his neck.

“Timmy, look out!” Bethany is beside me again, rifle raised.

It’s a small contingent of men from the congregation, some in suits, some in overalls, and suspenders. They don’t carry guns
, but there are a few butchers knives and pipes present; one of them swings a butterfly blade open, letting it dangle next to his thigh. They draw confidence from their numbers.

“Let our Pastor go
.”

The Rabid have begun pounding at the chain link fence to my left.

“You can have her once we’re clear of this place. Till then, you need to back away.” I dig the barrel harder into her temple, underlining my commitment to violence.

“Nah, little nigger lover, you’ll let her go now,” He’s wearing a belly hugging V-Neck and a set of patterned suspenders; brown on white. He’s got a straw hat and an unkempt beard. His crystal blue eyes are huddled back in their sockets, gleaming like two tiny diamonds. He marches forward, parting the group like a man that is used to carving his way through life with his girth and a healthy dose of intimidation.